Old Friends

Reading and I aren't best friends anymore. It's different for me now than it was when I was little. I guess I could never really fathom the idea that reading would ever mean so much in everyday life as I understand now. I wish that I would've grasped reading a bit better than I actually did, but it's never too late to start again. As I remember, my reading gradually went down the older I became.

        When I was very little, my mother would read to me daily. I loved the books with all the elaborate pictures, amusing sounds and flaky stories of my favorite nursery rhyme characters. After a warm bath and cool creamy ice cream, I would always cuddle up to my mom as she read my favorite books over and over until I came across another one that caught my attention. Sometimes my mother would walk in my room and see me with my nose in an upside-down book, which she found humorous. She loved to read to me and see how much I loved it too since her, and the rest of my family, never exactly liked reading, or school, for that matter. She was never the person to grab a book and dig in, but she wanted me to be that person, and I admire her for that now.

        My grandpa was a tremendous influence for when it came to reading. My grandfather had a concentrated, deep, passionate infatuation with learning and so did I. That is how our relationship blossomed. He was one of the few in my family that went to college and lived life to the absolute fullest, education wise. He could explain and elaborate on anything you would ever want to know. Whenever I needed help with words in a book or understanding what an author meant, he was the person to go to and I always did. If he wasn't helping out with my homework, he was reading. Every day he would be engrossed in an old western by Louis L'Amour, and I promise he had every book L'Amour had ever written. I saw my grandpa reading, and I wanted to be just like him. I would plop down on the couch in the same position he had been sitting in and read a book just like he did. Throughout school, I always explained to him the stories my teacher had read to us or story I had already read for a book report. School and reading were all we ever talked about, and our relationship became like peanut butter and jelly. We just went together.

        Whenever my grandfather died in 2008, so did my passion for reading. It wasn't for entertainment anymore; it wasn't even delightful to read like it was without him. I felt as if I was forced to read and being forced to read only called attention to the burning memory that my grandpa wasn't there to help me through it. So throughout the rest of my school life, I never read. I only read when I was asked to do so, and I didn't take a liking to it since then.

        Now, I am gradually getting back into the hang of reading. I've attained the thought that my grandfather would absolutely want me to read. I know he would give anything to see me gaining knowledge from book after book and loving it too. Trying to read is a difficult task, but maybe I will create another bond in the near future. For now, reading and I are merely old friends trying to figure out a way to connect again.